5 Famous Video Game Villains (Who Are Actually the Victim)

#2. Mario Is Constantly Killing Children

The Koopa Kids are Bowser's chief lieutenants in Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World, leading us to wonder which unrescued princess gave birth to them in a windowless dungeon.

One with a uterus as spacious and durable as a late-'80s Volkswagen.

Each one guards a stronghold in Mario's path, which is, historically, a tremendous mistake. One by one, Mario marches through them, tossing them all, without exception or remorse, into boiling lakes of molten rock. He does this for sex, so we think nothing of it.

"Yoshi and his friends are going to wait in the fucking car."

But we should, because the Koopa Kids are child soldiers, conscripted by their tyrannical father and thrown headlong into a conflict that predates their own births against an enemy they have no real chance of defeating. All they know is that Dad handed them a scepter and a castle and said "This is yours now."

Via ilvg.wikia.comYep, he looks like he understands the gravity of the situation.

"He told me all I have to do is touch your heart with this magic spear and we'll be together forever."

Mario, clearly never having seen Blood Diamond, kills every single one of them, flashes a peace sign and cheekily entombs their eternal spirits beneath a pile of rubble.

"Donut Land" is just making him focus more on the sex.

Granted, the Koopa Kids do return in New Super Mario Bros. Wii ... 16 years later. That's more than enough time for Bowser, insane with grief, to have raised seven more kids and given them all the same names in a desperate attempt to correct the mistakes of the past.

Step one of which is to put them in the exact same situation.

#1. Samus Murders Countless Alien Families in Super Metroid

Super Metroid stars Samus Aran, an intergalactic bounty hunter spelunking into the consistently horrible Planet Zebes to recover an infant Metroid from the evil Space Pirates, as one does. The powerful baby alien decides Samus is its mother, and that relationship defines most of the game. So, given that all of Super Metroid's bosses are freaky alien horrors standing between Samus and an endangered infant, how tragic can any of them really be?

Let's take a closer look. One of the first bosses is Kraid, a fat lizard with belly fingers:

Samus battles this feeble boss at the end of a hallway, pretty much annihilating it without a second thought. To be fair, Samus is on her way to rescue an innocent infant creature; she can't be bothered with every single little detail.

And if we're being honest, we also would've shot this thing immediately.

But when she proceeds to the next room, she encounters an enraged, two-screen-tall behemoth Kraid. What Samus killed before was, in all likelihood, its child. Its "rage" is a product of bewildered, desperate mourning, and it is absolutely justified.

So really, Samus should be firing a grief counselor out of that gun.

Samus kills it anyway, without batting an eyelash. Of course, that might not mean anything, right? Bosses look like giant versions of smaller enemies all the time. It's just a rule of video games. However, something bizarre happens later on in Samus' journey when she reaches the crustacean boss, Draygon: Just before the fight, five little Draygon babies randomly swim by. They aren't enemies. Samus can't even shoot them.

Something in Metroid that can't be shot? Balderdash!

Once they've finished passing by, big Draygon swoops in and attacks, locking Samus into a brutal struggle that ends with her electrocuting it (and nearly herself) to death. Its smoking carcass collapses to the ground, one more gruesome enemy felled in Samus' quest to free the alien child that calls her "mother." However, once the dead Draygon starts sinking into the sand, the babies suddenly return to bury their murdered parent in front of you.

"No need to waste your bullets on us -- we will all surely die of starvation, since we are mere babies."

In her singular pursuit, Samus has orphaned five creatures and forced a sixth to suffer the agony of outliving its child before releasing it from bottomless despair with the cruel mercy of a laser cannon.

Finally she makes it to the infant Metroid, rescuing it from the evil Mother Brain (whose name suggests that it too has a family somewhere that depends on it). But Super Metroid is not without irony, and Mother Brain, presumably having paid much closer attention to the little details than Samus, gives her a taste of her own medicine and kills the Metroid as it gives Samus a life-saving hug.

Right up the ol' alien butthole.

By the end of Super Metroid, Samus has destroyed several alien families to rescue some space infant that isn't even hers, only to watch it die in her arms. However, unlike the other video game heroes discussed in this article, we feel that Samus learns a powerful lesson from the consequences of her callous adventuring that resonates deep within to her very core, which she demonstrates by nuking the entire goddamn planet.

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